This invention relates to improvements in Texas gates, otherwise known as cattle grills or guards.
The prior art has provided various forms of Texas gates or cattle grills which are in the form of gratings set in the ground in a gap in a fence, hedge or wall to take the place of a gate. A wheeled vehicle can readily be driven across such a gate but cattle, horses, sheep, deer and most other animals cannot or will not cross it as their feet would tend to pass between the bars or tubes of the Texas gate and into a shallow pit typically provided therebeneath.
While the Texas gates provided by the prior art have been more or less successful, they are subject to a number of conditions and problems. For example, debris tends to build up in the shallow pit provided beneath the gate and this must be cleaned out periodically but the prior art designs do not tend to facilitate this task. Reference may be had here to U.S. Pat. No. 2,539,214 to Warner wherein clean-out of debris can be achieved by removal of the flexible straps, but they must be removed one-by-one by unscrewing nuts and bolts; there is no ready access. Furthermore, U.S. Pat. No. 5,203,544 to Webb shows grill sections that can be removed for clean-out purposes, but they must be lifted out, i.e. they are not hinged. In addition, many Texas gate designs do not provide an effective barrier to vehicular traffic. It is often desirable to use these gates on access roads to oil well sites and the like and at times it may be desirable to prevent vehicles from crossing the gate, especially in restricted areas. As shown in Australian Patent 158,473 to Taylor the two halves of the gate swing upward and outward to the sides of the roadway providing ready access for clean-out purposes, but they do not create a vehicular barrier. In addition, especially in the case of oil well sites, once operations have been completed, the access road will be closed and abandoned and it would be desirable to be able to remove the complete Texas gate assembly and to transport it to another site thus eliminating or reducing wastage of equipment and materials. Reference is made here to U.S. Pat. No. 4,844,423 to Combs for a portable Pop-up-Guard, but it must be de-assembled first and cannot be moved as a unit. Hence it can be seen that the presently known prior art Texas gate designs do not appear to have made adequate provision for all of the above conditions and problems in a single gate construction.